On comparing the working speeds of conventional insertion apparatuses and those of conventional newspaper printing presses, which nowadays have a capacity of approximately 70,000 and more newspapers per hour, it can be seen that the latter speeds are nowhere near reached. In order to be able to utilize this high capacity of printing presses in connection with the insertion of the individual printed product units, it is necessary for the insertion system to have a correspondingly high working speed. Achieving such a high speed is made difficult by the fact that nowadays the printed products are very large, e.g. having 200 or more pages, and that a single insertion process requires a minimum working or processing time.
Conventional insertion apparatuses reach maximum working speeds of roughly ten to a maximum of forty thousand printed products per hour. Attempts have been made to increase the working speed and adaptability of such equipment, but the known solutions lead to other disadvantages limiting practical use.
Swiss Patent 659 642 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,067) discloses an apparatus for compiling newspapers which is designed according to the merry-go-round principle. This apparatus has a rotary platform with reception compartments and a plurality of stationary feed stations arranged in a circle, in which n (n being conventionally 2) feed stations are supplied with cover or wrapping sheets and in-feed stations with insert sheets. Therefore each station only has to feed every n th, i.e. every second, reception compartment, so that the rotary platform can rotate more rapidly than the corresponding merry-go-round principle devices. However, in principle, such apparatuses with a rotary platform or similar rotary systems suffer from the disadvantage that the feed channels to the feed stations lead away radially from the rotary platform and the complete installation takes up a large amount of space. Moreover, only a limited number of reception compartments can be arranged around the rotary platform circumference, so that there is a limitation to a few units of the printed product units which can be simultaneously inserted into the cover sheet or newspaper jacket. As can be gathered from the aforementioned patent, with working speeds of 40,000 per hour only one cover sheet and six insert sheets can be compiled, while at a speed of 80,000 per hour only one cover sheet and two insert sheets can be compiled. The working speed is related to the end product, i.e. there are 40,000 complete end products with inserted supplements per hour at the discharge point. Thus, in the case of such apparatuses, the higher working speed is bought at the cost of the number of insertable units. Therefore such an apparatus is only suitable for printed products with limited numbers and also, due to the large space requirement, only for special uses.
Obviously attempts have also been made to functionally arrange in parallel several insertion apparatuses but this, apart from the additional space requirement, leads to much greater mechanical expenditure and, therefore, to high costs.
The processing of printed products by means of a cell wheel (insertion drum), namely the insertion of supplements into folded printed products, or the compilation of partial products to form a complete product is e.g. known from Swiss patents 584 153 (U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,399), 649 267 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,416,448) and 575 303 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,058,202). Apart from the limited output of printed products, such apparatuses can only be used to a limited extent for the compilation of large end products. In order to increase the working speed of the apparatus, Swiss Patent 649 267 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,416,448) proposes that two printed products jointly traverse the processing or working path. This obviously increases the speed of the insertion process, but additional components and means are required in order to ensure operationally reliable insertion. There are also only limited possibilities for inserting a plurality of inserts or printed product units, particularly if different insertion combinations are to be obtained. Also in the case of this apparatus, the scope of the end product is limited to a relatively small number of pages.